But the severity of that Act was mitigated by a beneficent administration.

Some fierce and stubborn non-jurors who would not debase themselves by asking for any indulgence, and some conspicuous enemies of the government who had asked for indulgence in vain, were under the necessity of taking refuge on the Continent.

But the great majority of those offenders who promised to live peaceably under William's rule obtained his permission to remain in their native land.
In the case of one great offender there were some circumstances which attracted general interest, and which might furnish a good subject to a novelist or a dramatist.

Near fourteen years before this time, Sunderland, then Secretary of State to Charles the Second, had married his daughter Lady Elizabeth Spencer to Donough Macarthy, Earl of Clancarty, the lord of an immense domain in Munster.

Both the bridegroom and the bride were mere children, the bridegroom only fifteen, the bride only eleven.